Fire & Ash

CHAPTER 86

A voice said, “Yo, monkey-banger… you going to sleep forever?”

Benny’s first reaction was surprise. In his dreams he was dead, killed by Brother Peter or eaten by zoms. Or gored by a white rhino. Or shot by Preacher Jack.

But dead in any case.

His second reaction was confusion. Not at being alive, but at who was talking to him.

That wasn’t the right voice. It wasn’t Joe, and it wasn’t any of the girls. It wasn’t even Brother Albert.

Whose voice was that? It sounded like…

He carefully, tentatively opened one eye.

He was in a hospital bed. Metal tubing for the frame, stiff white sheets, the pervasive smell of antiseptic with other, nastier smells buried beneath it. Electric lights in the ceiling.

There was a chair beside his bed and a figure sitting in it. Thin, angular, and impossible.

“Ch-Chong?” stammered Benny.

“What’s left of him,” said his friend. Louis Chong looked like a stick-figure version of himself. He was wrapped in a blanket, cradling a cup of steaming tea between his palms. His skin was a dreadful shade of gray-green. His hair was freshly washed and combed back from his face. “Welcome back from the land of the dead.”

“How?” pleaded Benny. “How are you — I mean—”

“You guys saved me,” said Chong.

Benny had to reach deep into the shadows that clung to his memories. He had only a vague idea where he was — the infirmary at Sanctuary — and an even vaguer idea of how he got there. The most recent memories that were sharp and clear involved the hidden bioweapons lab built into the baked rocks of Zabriskie Point. He remembered Dr. McReady, the mutagen… and Archangel.

“The… pills?” he asked tentatively.

“The pills,” Chong said, nodding. “Nix and Lilah told me how you found Dr. McReady and brought her back here.”

Benny lay on his side, and his body did not seem to want to move. He raised his head and looked around. Most of the staff were sleeping in their beds, but a few ragged-looking nurses were working to clean them up. One was helping a newly recovered soldier to his feet. No one screamed or thrashed.

“Archangel really works,” said Benny. “God…”

“It was weird,” said Chong slowly. “I could feel the stuff in the pills working right away, but it was like someone was throwing buckets of water on a brush fire in my head. Every second was another bucket. How long before I stopped wanting to do crazy things to people — like fricking eat them? Hours, man. And even longer before I could actually say that to Lilah so she’d untie me. But that was all last night.”

“Last night? What time is it—?”

“Past six in the morning now. Best I can tell, you’ve been out of it since around ten last night. So about eight hours.” He sighed. “Been a long night, man.”

“Do you… do you remember what happened after Riot brought you here?” Benny paused. “Do you remember being… um… sick?”

A shadow passed across Chong’s face. “I remember all of it. Every last minute. Getting shot with an arrow… the ride here on Riot’s quad. The changes. God… the hunger. I even remember you coming to visit me in my cell.” He touched his temple. “It’s all up here for me any time I want to look at it.”

He spoke in the ironic, amused tone he always used, but it was clear that demons had taken up residence in the house of his memories, and Benny wondered if they could ever be exorcised.

“Hey, man,” he said, “we found the cure, right? Let’s focus on that…. ” His voice trailed off as pain flickered behind Chong’s eyes. “What is it?”

“Benny… about that. Those pills… they’re not really a cure. They’re a treatment. I’m still sick. If I take the pills I’ll still be me, more or less. But if I stop, I go back to being that thing you saw in the cage. That’s how it’s going to be. Unless they come up with a real cure, something that gets this out of my system forever, I’ll always have to take medicine. And… I’ll always have to be really careful. This is contagious, y’know?”

Benny swallowed a lump the size of a fist. “And… Lilah?”

“She knows. We have to be really, really careful. We can touch and all, and we can kiss. But for anything else… Jeez, Benny, this is crazy. I love her, man,” said Chong, wiping at his eyes. “I love her more than anything, but I don’t want to make her sick.”

“I know…”

“No,” said Chong, “you don’t. I told her that she should stay away from me. She shouldn’t ever touch me; she shouldn’t ever get close to me. Dr. McReady told her the same thing….”

“What did Lilah say?”

Chong gave a short, rueful laugh. “She threatened to punch Dr. McReady’s teeth down her throat and told me to stop being a stupid town boy. She said that if I ever tried to go away from her again, she’d break my legs. She’s very romantic, that girl. Sweet as a kitten… if a kitten was a Siberian tiger with mood issues.”

Benny grinned. “Yeah, but for some inexplicable reason she loves you.”

“That only proves how crazy she is.”

Benny looked around. “Hey — where’s Nix?”

“Nix was here until like a minute before you woke up. I think she went to the bathroom. They have actual bathrooms here. No squatting behind bushes and wiping your butt with poison ivy.”

“That’s not exactly what we did.”

“Felt like it.”

“And where’s Lilah?”

“Ah,” he said, his smile fading. “The doctors wanted to give her something called an MRI. No idea what that is, but they said that she might have a skull fracture.” He shook his head. “I can’t have anything happen to her, Benny. Nothing.”

Benny reached out to try and give him a reassuring pat on the arm, but then winced as pain shot through his back.

“Owwww! What the hell?”

Chong nodded. “Yeah, they said the painkillers would be wearing off pretty soon.”

“Painkillers…? For what?”

“Aww, it’s so cute that you thought of me first before remembering that you had a big ol’ sword fight with a psycho killer. That little twinge you’re feeling is a knife wound, genius. They said that the anesthetic might make you a little slow. Not that this is a new mental state for you.”

“Bite me,” said Benny through gritted teeth.

“No thanks,” said Chong. “From now on I’m going to explore that whole vegan thing.”

“This… hurts. How bad is it? What happened?”

“Basically you got stabbed in the wrong place,” Chong said, and he told Benny enough so that the door of memories opened up. The fight with Brother Peter replayed in Benny’s mind with painful clarity.

“How am I not dead?”

“Because fortune favors the stupid,” said Chong. “The knife hit your ribs at the wrong angle. Didn’t puncture anything important enough to kill you. More like a scratch.”

“Could have freaking fooled me. If I’m only scratched, why did I pass out?”

“Because you’re a girlie-man?”

“Really, seriously, bite me.”

“They said it was blood loss, shock, and something about nerve compression. They put in a crapload of stitches. They said that you’ll be able to get out of bed today, though only for a couple of minutes at a time. The armor you were wearing kept the knife from going in too deep. And they examined Brother Peter’s knife. There was no infectious matter on it. Not like on the arrow I got shot with.”

“That’s something.”

“I can’t believe you agreed to a duel with a guy who makes Charlie Pink-eye look like a punk.”

“It wasn’t a duel. I had a plan.”

“A plan to get stabbed?”

“Yes,” Benny said, and he explained what he’d done. “It was like sacrificing a queen to get a checkmate.”

Chong stared at him. “That hovers somewhere between the bravest thing I ever heard of and the stupidest. It’s probably both.”

“Probably,” agreed Benny.

Chong shook his head. “As for the rest, I got bits and pieces of everything else. That guy Joe is here somewhere too. Is he the same Joe Ledger from the Zombie Cards?”

“Yes. Is he all right?”

“He caught a break too. They operated on him and were able to save his life. Lots of damage, though. Dr. McReady said it’ll be months before he can fight again.”

“Oh, man…”

“Point is, Benny, we’re both alive, and so are Nix and Lilah.” Chong paused. “After what happened, after things started to go bad in the forest out there… I thought this was it, you know? I thought we were all dead. It seemed like the logical end to all of this. I mean, who were we? Four kids who had no business leaving home. Okay, so maybe Lilah’s different, but after Tom died, we should have gone back to Mountainside.”

And that fast the cobwebs in Benny’s head blew away.

“Mountainside!” he cried. “Oh my God!”

CHAPTER 87

They formed a circle around Joe Ledger’s bed. Benny in a wheel-chair, Chong and Lilah holding hands, Nix standing next to Benny. Dr. McReady and Colonel Reid were there too.

The ranger was awake and in great pain. His color was bad, and sweat beaded his forehead. Dr. McReady was angry with him because he refused to take any pain meds.

“I need to think,” he growled, “and I can’t do that pumped full of morphine.”

“Pain increases stress and—”

“Oh, stick a sock in it, Monica,” he fired back. “I’ve had a lot worse than—”

“I know, I know, Joe, I’ve heard all the stories. You’ve been shot, stabbed, run over, and mauled by wild animals. I’m very impressed with your level of testosterone, but the simple fact remains that those injuries happened to a much younger man and—”

“Like I said, stick a sock in it.”

Grimm — no longer wearing his armor — lay beside the bed and gave a hearty whuff.

Joe turned his red-rimmed, bleary eyes to Benny. “Go on, kid… what did you want to tell us?”

Benny repeated what Brother Peter had said with his dying breath.

Mountainside will burn.

“We have to get home,” finished Benny.

“We can’t,” said Colonel Reid. “We’ve secured this facility, but topside it’s still a war zone. All my soldiers are either dead or in the infirmary, and there are half a million infected out there. More, now that they’ve probably killed all the people in the hangars. God knows how many reapers.”

“And all the monks,” said Nix. She wore a fresh bandage over the cut from Brother Peter.

Chong said, “What about Riot and that little girl, Eve?”

No one wanted to meet his eyes.

“They were up there,” said Benny. “We… didn’t see them when we landed.”

The implications of that hung in the air.

“You’re saying they’re dead?” asked Chong.

“There are places to hide,” said Joe weakly. “And Riot knows every one of them.”

“Maybe,” said Reid, “but that doesn’t change anything. We don’t have the manpower to take the compound back from the dead, and we can’t call for help. The reapers trashed the communications center. And we’re running on the backup generator because they destroyed the main power plant.”

“We can’t be stuck down here,” said Benny, banging his fist on the metal tubing of Joe’s bed. “Our town—”

“Your town might as well be on the far side of the moon,” said Colonel Reid. “Those balloons were filled with the mutagen. It’s a red powder, sticks to everything. Until the mutagen weakens the infected through decomposition, we’re trapped. I just hope the generator lasts long enough for that to happen.”

“We have to get out of here,” said Nix sternly. “We have to try and find Riot and Eve, and then we have to get back to our town.”

“To do what? Four kids can’t save a town,” said Reid. “And from what Joe told me about Mountainside, it’s indefensible. A flat field and a chain-link fence is no defense at all.”

“Yeah,” said Nix bitterly, “I guess you found that out here. The minefield beyond the fence didn’t stop the balloons, and sensors inside the fence couldn’t alert anyone because everyone was sick. The reapers just waltzed in here.”

Reid’s face darkened.

Nix dug her journal out of her pack. “See this? I’ve been collecting everything there is to know about zoms, and about the way people fight zoms. I’ve also asked Joe about a million questions about tactics and strategies. If I can get home to Mountainside, I can help them get ready. Earthworks, deadfalls, spiked walls, fire pits… I understand this stuff. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

“She’s not joking,” said Chong. “If we can get out of here, we might actually be able to do something to help our town. We need to find a way out of this compound.”

Reid started to shake her head, but Chong cut her off.

“My family is in Mountainside,” he said, and his voice held an edge Benny had never before heard there. “I’ve been through too much hell over the last month to want to debate this.”

“He’s right,” said Benny. “Look, Colonel, your soldiers are either dead or recovering from the plague, so right now I think there are more of us than there are of you. We’re going to get out of here. The question is whether you help us, in which case you get to lock the door behind us, or you don’t help us, and you take your chances with whoever or whatever walks through that door.”

The moment stretched as Reid looked from Benny to Chong to Lilah to Nix.

In the silence, Joe Ledger spoke. Benny knew that he had to be in terrible pain, and yet the ranger imposed a degree of control over his voice that spoke to an incredible strength of will. Like Tom’s. Unique in its own way, but also like Tom’s. Brothers of a kind.

“Jane,” he said evenly, “I know what you’re thinking. These are four teenagers. Kids. Benny’s stitched up and looks like he was thrown down an elevator shaft. Chong — hell, a few hours ago Chong was willing to eat people. Lilah’s been punched twice in the face by a powerful adult male. And little Phoenix — she’s not even five feet tall and looks like she’s ninety pounds of red hair and freckles. Kids, sure. And who are kids compared to what’s out there? Kids aren’t able to do this kind of thing.”

“That’s just it… they don’t stand a chance out there.”

“If I thought that, I’d crawl out of this bed and tackle them myself. Or I’d sic Grimm on them.”

Grimm said, Whuff.

“So, yeah, they’re teenagers, but let’s face it… they’re not kids anymore. There was a line in the sand somewhere, and they each crossed it. Look at them, Jane. Look in their eyes. Every one of them is a seasoned fighter. They’ve been in battle. They’ve killed. Humans and zoms. I couldn’t have found or saved Monica without them. And if it wasn’t for these four young samurai, we’d all be dead in the hall downstairs, or we’d be shambling around looking for a hot meal of human flesh. Because of them we still have Archangel, which means, like it or not, these kids may actually have helped save the world. The actual world, including the part you’re standing on with such self-righteous indignity.”

The room tumbled into a big well of silence.

Monica McReady shook her head, but it was more in exasperation and helplessness than in protest. Reid stood foursquare at the foot of the bed and said nothing.

Finally she said, “How? Tell me that, Joe. How do we help them get out?”

“I’m working on that. Jane, can you get the hangar doors closed?”

“They are closed,” she said. “We sealed the place while you were in surgery. The, um, girls helped.”

Benny already knew about that. Nix had told him while they were waiting for Reid and McReady to join them. Once the exterior doors, including the big hangar doors, were closed, then it was a matter of going room to room, hall by hall, tracking down the dead and any stray reapers and cutting them down. Grimm was with Reid and the girls, and even though he was bruised from Brother Peter’s kick, the monstrous mastiff had been as useful as a pet tank. He smashed into zoms and cut them down, leaving the wounded wrecks for Nix, Lilah, and Reid to finish. The whole process took five grueling hours.

The worst part was clearing out the hangar. There were more than a hundred zoms in there. Colonel Reid had to do most of the work with a machine gun, and the girls offered backup and protection while she reloaded.

Joe said, “Okay, so all we need now is a plan.”

Benny cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “I think I have one. But I’m pretty sure no one’s going to like it.”

He told them.

As usual… no one liked it.

But they did it anyway.

CHAPTER 88

Nix pushed Benny’s chair, Lilah pushed Chong’s, and Monica McReady pushed Joe’s. The elevator was turned off because of the limited power available from the backup generator, but Reid temporarily shut down the lighting and air-conditioning long enough to use the lift. Joe had a pistol on his lap — completely against doctor’s orders. Reid had a .45 in her hands. Benny sat with his kami katana resting between his knees, and Chong had the bow that had been used to fire the arrow into him. Riot had kept it, and it was among Chong’s possessions in the infirmary. The arrows in the quiver had all been steam sterilized, though. Benny approved of the choice of weapons. In the Scouts and in gym class, Chong had always excelled in archery.

Once they were back at ground level, they moved through a few dogleg turns until they rolled out into the hangar. The state of the vast room gave everyone pause, even Nix and Lilah, who’d helped cause this. There were bodies everywhere, and splashes of blood and black muck on virtually every surface.

Benny reached up and took Nix’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

Words really couldn’t cover this sort of thing. However, as Joe had said, they’d stood on too many battlefields by now to need words. Sometimes all that really matters is the knowledge that someone else understands.

She bent and kissed his fingers and then the top of his head.

They made their way to the helicopter. It wasn’t easy. Bodies and parts of bodies had to be dragged out of the way to make room for the chairs.

No one said anything until they were at the door of the Black Hawk. Colonel Reid grasped the handle and rolled the door back while Lilah covered her with a pistol. Just in case there were any surprises in there.

There weren’t.

It was a small, meager slice of relief that they all dined on.

Then Joe had to talk Reid, Lilah, and Nix through the process of reloading the thirty-millimeter chain guns that were mounted below the Black Hawk’s stubby wings. Reid, despite being an officer, was really a bureaucrat. She’d never done this kind of work. Joe knew every bit of it, and he talked them through it. He didn’t bother getting them to replace the missiles he’d fired.

He said, “This bird is configured to carry sixteen of them on those ESSS wings. I used six, so we have ten left. If ten Hellfires won’t git ’er done, then we’re using them the wrong way.”

The one real problem was gas.

“We have enough fuel for thirty minutes of flight time,” he said. “And that will be cutting it awful damn close. These things won’t fly on good wishes or prayers.”

Refueling was out of the question. The fuel truck had been blown to scrap metal during the raid.

“We have to try,” said Benny.

Joe nodded. “Yes, we do.”

The toughest part was getting Joe Ledger out of the wheelchair, into the cockpit, and buckled into the pilot’s chair without bursting any of the stitches, outside or in. Benny and Chong sat next to each other and watched, wincing and tensing with each painful, careful, dreadful step. By the time he was settled in, everyone looked ten years older. Benny and Chong had also added several new words and phrases to their vocabulary of astounding vulgarities.

“Wow,” said Chong after one of Joe’s outbursts. He nodded appreciatively. “Livestock, too.”

“I like the one with the iguanas and the jalapeño peppers. That’s wrong on so many levels.”

“So true.”

They cut looks at each other and grinned.

“Really missed you, man,” said Benny.

“I really missed me too,” said Chong.

Dr. McReady checked Benny’s bandage, frowned, and handed him a small bundle with extra dressings, antiseptic, and a bottle of blue pills.

“They’re for the pain,” she said.

“Will they make me sleepy?”

“Yes.”

“Then no thanks.”

She shook her head. “Stop being macho and take them. If you don’t need them now, once you get started on this goofy plan of yours, you’re going to need them. Believe me.”

He took the bag.

McReady smiled at him and then offered her hand. “You’re fifteen?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“When I was fifteen, I was still writing poetry and wondering if I was going to get a date for the soph hop.”

“What’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Then she did something Benny would never have expected. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Be safe and stay alive.”

She turned and walked away to check on Joe. Benny watched her go. The woman, like most people he’d met since leaving town, was a contradiction. Brilliant, thorny, and different from every angle.

Lilah came over and stood in front of Chong, who was trying to get himself out of his wheelchair. “I can carry you.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m strong enough,” she insisted.

“I’m not,” Chong replied. “And Benny would never ever let me live it down.”

She gave Benny a hard look.

“It’s true,” he admitted. “Never.”

Her lip curled as she fought to think of something biting to say. Instead she growled low in her throat. It sounded a lot like Grimm.

“Then get up and walk, you stupid town boy,” she snapped.

Chong stuffed his pockets with bags of Archangel pills, then reached out a hand. “Little help?”

From the look on Chong’s face, it was clear that Lilah nearly tore his arm out of its socket. He stood in front of her, wobbly-kneed and as pale as death. Although Benny would die rather than say it, his friend never looked more like a zom than he did now.

And with that thought came an ugly splinter of speculation. If they did manage to get back to town, and if somehow the reaper army could be stopped — Chong would have to break the news to his parents that he was infected, that he would always be infected, that he was only a few tiny steps from crossing the line to being the kind of monster everyone in the world hated and feared.

What would they say? How would they react?

How would the rest of the town react?

He studied the pale face of his best friend and knew that there was no pill that could ease all the pain Chong had yet to face.

He knew one thing, though… no matter what happened, no matter what anyone said, Benny was going to be there for Chong. So would Nix. And so, without a doubt, would Lilah.

While Lilah helped Chong, Nix pulled Chong’s chair closer to Benny’s and sat in it. They held hands and leaned close for a kiss.

“I want to say something,” she began.

“Oh God, Nix, if this is going to be some kind of ‘in case we die’ speech…”

She smiled. “Not really. I want to confess something.”

Benny tensed, pretty sure that he didn’t want to hear anything that followed that kind of an opening. But his mouth said, “Okay.”

“After Tom died, after we left Gameland… I think I stopped being in love with you.”

“Nix, please, I—”

“Let me finish, Benny… please.” She looked at him with those intelligent green eyes that were always so full of mystery and magic to him. “Out there in the desert I realized that we fell in love too fast. No, don’t say it… I know it was going in that direction for a long time. Since we were like, I don’t know — ten, I think. At least for me. But when we were in the mountains, when we were all alone up in that forest ranger tower, I think I fell in love with who I always imagined you were. Not with who you were. Do you understand?”

He wanted to say that he didn’t, and he wanted to get up and run away from this conversation. Instead he said, “Yes.” Very quietly. Because he did understand.

“I think you felt it too, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. A whisper.

“It was all like being in a fairy tale or an old story of knights and castles. I was the princess; you were the prince. We were supposed to have a happily ever after, but that’s not how life is, is it?”

“No.”

He wished his mouth would stop agreeing with her. He did not want to agree. He did not want to speak.

“Then, all those months of training, getting ready to go, it was really all about running away. I was running away from my mom’s death. So was Tom. And I think he was running away from what he thought was his failure. He wasn’t able to save Mom’s life. And he was so tired of fighting. He kept trying to get the people in town — in our town and all the towns — to wake up and open their eyes. Tom had a good plan for defending the towns and building a militia so that everyone worked together for defense and to begin taking back the world. He left town because no one was listening to him and it was driving him crazy. And you, Benny… you left town for me.” She shook her head. “I think you left town because you thought you were supposed to. Because that’s what the romantic, heroic prince does for the princess.”

Benny said nothing.

“I’m an idiot for making you leave,” she said.

“You didn’t force anyone to go.”

She shrugged. “I could have made you stay. You and Tom. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that’s not true?”

He didn’t even try.

“After Gameland… I thought we fell in love again, but then things got hard and… I don’t know… the feeling wasn’t there. You felt it too, I could tell.”

“It came back,” he said.

“Did it? Or did we simply stop trying to force things? Once we got here, we thought we’d lost Lilah and Chong. Even when we got Lilah back, she wasn’t the same. She still isn’t. She’s regressed almost to where she was when we met her. Chong knows it too; you can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. He’s managing her, but she’s not really there.”

“Where are we going with this, Nix? ’Cause right now I don’t—”

“Shh. Just listen, okay? I’m trying not to be a hard-ass bitch for a change. No, don’t say anything and don’t, for God’s sake, defend me to me. I’m not a very nice person, Benny. Even I can’t stand myself most of the time. I know I get on your nerves sometimes. And I really don’t know how or why you put up with me.” She took a breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that something’s changed. Over the last day, something inside me has changed. I’m not little Nix Riley anymore. I’m not that girl. But at the same time I don’t know who I am. I know I’m stronger. Clearing out the compound with Lilah and Colonel Reid? Can you even imagine the Nix of a couple of months ago doing that? Now… I just do it. It’s part of my life. Swords and fighting and killing. That’s part of my life. If we survive this, I think it might still be part of my life. I’m never going to be the kind of girl who sits at home and raises babies, and I’m not going to work in the general store measuring out grain or bagging groceries. I’m an actual warrior, Benny. I like being a warrior. When I look at the future, all I can see is how I’m going to take back the land. If I have to clear out zoms, then I’ll do that. If I have to go after bounty hunters and outlaws, I’m going to do that, too. That’s who I am, Benny. Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve actually become what Tom was trying to make us. I’ve become a samurai, and I want to go on being a samurai. I want to use everything that I’ve learned to make things right. And I don’t want to put them back the way they were. I want to help make a brand-new world. That’s who I am, Benny.”

Benny nodded. “I know, Nix. I saw this coming.”

She studied his eyes, then nodded.

“So, where does that leave us?” he asked. Then he took in a breath and asked the hardest question in the world. “Do you still love me?”

Tears fell down her cheeks.

“I’ll always love you, Benny,” she said. “I just don’t know if I’m in love with you.”

She clutched his hand.

“Benny… please don’t hate me for telling the truth.”

Benny Imura pulled her to him, and they clung together in the heat of that awful shared awareness. “I could never hate you, Nix,” he said, his words muffled by her hair and by the pain in his heart.

She did not ask if he loved her.

Neither of them wanted to hear the answer to that question. There was no way — no matter how it was answered — that it would not cut like a sword.

CHAPTER 89

Colonel Reid cleared her throat, and Benny let go of Nix. She straightened and stood a few feet away.

“We need to get you on the chopper,” she said. Her eyes darted to Nix’s face, which was flushed and streaked with tears, and Benny’s, which he tried to turn away.

Nix held out her hand and helped Benny out of the chair. Dr. McReady had used a powerful local anesthetic on the knife wound, and it did, by Benny’s reckoning, nothing at all. But the pain was a marvelous distraction. It pulled his thoughts away from the even more savage wound in his heart.

They climbed onto the helicopter. Nix wanted to buckle Benny into a seat, but he shook his head, preferring to stay by the door. She reluctantly agreed and started to close the door, but Reid put her hand out to block it.

“You can still change your minds,” said the colonel. “You’re welcome to stay here. Once the American Nation realizes that our communications are down, they’ll send a team. They know we’re quarantined, but they’ll send helos to observe and report. It might only be a few days.”

“The reapers are marching on Mountainside,” said Nix. “For all we know, they could already be there. Saint John left here a month ago.”

“All the more reason to stay where it’s safe.”

Nix shook her head. “Nowhere’s safe. Not until we make it safe.”

Reid sighed and started to turn away.

“Don’t forget us,” said Nix. “Just because your people don’t see us, just because we’re inconvenient, it doesn’t mean that we don’t matter.”

Colonel Reid turned to her, and there was an indescribable look on the woman’s face. She didn’t say a word, didn’t nod or anything. Instead she slid the door shut. Benny and Nix watched through the window as the colonel and the doctor ran for the door back to the compound. It slammed shut and they were gone.

The engine fired up, and the big rotors began to turn. Joe’s voice rumbled out of the overhead speakers. “Okay, kids, here we go. If this whole thing goes into the crapper, just remember that it’s Benny’s idea.”

“Great,” yelled Benny. “Thanks.”

Joe was laughing when he cut off the mike.

A heavy buzzer sounded a warning as the big hangar doors rumbled open, rolling apart on metal tracks.

The dead were right there, right outside. Too many to count. A sea of them.

“God,” said Chong, and Benny turned to see his friend standing right next to him. Lilah, too.

“They’re coming fast,” yelled Benny.

The helicopter trembled as it lifted from the ground. Benny was doing math furiously in his head. From skids to rotor the Black Hawk was sixteen feet high. If the zoms reached up to grab, the tallest of them could reach seven and a half feet. Reid told them that the hangar door was fifty-five feet high. That should give the helicopter thirty feet of clearance. More than enough, Benny told himself. Who cared if the pilot was half-dead and more than a little crazy?

“Come on… come on!”

They were all saying it, willing the helicopter to rise before the tide of living dead could clear the fifty feet of open concrete.

They weren’t shambling.

They were running.

Every last one of them.

“Come on!”

It rose.

Even with the whine of the rotors, they could hear the combined voices of the zoms rise in a horrific moan of unsatisfied hunger. There was not enough living flesh in the world to assuage this army of the dead.

They heard hands thump against the skids. They heard fingernails rake along the metal. They felt the machine shudder as it fought against cold fingers that wrapped themselves around the landing assembly.

Joe tilted the Black Hawk forward, cruising inches above the fingers of the dead, dragging three clutching zoms with it. The external drag tilted the helicopter for a moment, and the tip of the rotor struck the field of reaching arms for a split second. Long enough, though, to tear a dozen hands from withered forearms.

Then one of the dangling zoms fell away.

And another.

Then the last one tumbled back down on the seething mass of the dead. The helicopter reached the open doorway.

“You’re too high,” cried Benny. “Too high!”

But the whirling blades cut only air. The massive doorway passed directly overhead, and suddenly they were out in the golden sunlight of the Mojave Desert.

Benny coughed out the breath he was holding as the chopper rose into the light. Then he heard a soft gagging sound. Nix, Lilah, and Chong were all there with him, staring out of the window at what lay below.

Seen from the air, with the sunshine highlighting every splash of red, every charred body, every gray face, the sight below threatened to take the heart out of Benny.

Nix made a sick sound deep in her chest. “Look… look for Riot. She could be anywhere.”

“Down there?” said Chong hollowly. “How could—”

He didn’t finish, and Benny knew that his friend had tried to cut off his own words a few seconds too late.

“She has to be down there,” said Nix urgently. “She’d have found a place for her and Eve to hide.”

But Joe turned the helicopter away, pointing its blunt nose toward the row of siren towers. They were silent now. That part of the airfield was also relatively clear. Except for a few of the old slow, shuffling R1 zoms, the rest of the dead were massed around the hangars on both sides of the trench.

“What do we do if the reapers trashed the sirens, too?” asked Chong.

“That’s plan B,” said Benny.

“What’s plan B?”

“We feed you to the zoms, and while they’re eating you — and getting sick to their stomachs — we run away.”

Lilah laid her hand on her knife. “No, you won’t.”

“Lilah,” said Chong, “he’s joking.”

She eyed Benny icily. “It’s not a funny joke.”

“Apparently not,” said Benny.

“Whoa, whoa, guys,” said Chong, pointing past him. “Look.”

Down below, the siren house was snugged up against the red rock wall of the mountains. The crushed gravel turnaround in front of the bunker was littered with bodies — a few zoms but three times as many reapers — and there was a clear trail of corpses that led in a crooked line back to the burning hangars. A quad sat a few feet from the bunker door, and a knot of eight zoms clustered in front of the door, relentlessly pounding on the metal.

“Someone’s in there,” said Nix.

“I hope they know how to work the sirens,” said Chong.

“Who do you think it is?” asked Lilah.

“I don’t know, but those zoms are trying real hard to get in,” said Benny. “Joe?”

“Yeah,” came the reply. “Got it.”

A moment later the chain guns opened up. Lines of impact points ran along the turnaround, kicking up pieces of gravel, until they caught up with the figures at the door. The rounds punched into the dead and flung them in all directions. When they were all down, Joe landed. Lilah had the sliding door open before the wheels were settled.

She and Nix jumped to the ground. Lilah had her spear and Nix drew Dojigiri.

“Stay here,” ordered Nix. “We got this.”

Benny glanced at Chong. “They got it,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

Chong helped Benny out of the helicopter, then reached in and removed the bow and arrows. Together they limped painfully after the girls. When Lilah realized they were following, she turned and gave Chong a look that would have peeled paint off of steel plate.

They approached the tangle of dead zoms. Two were still twitching, and Lilah quieted them with quick thrusts.

“Hello!” called Nix. “Is there anyone inside?”

Benny looked down at some of the reapers who lay dead. Not the ones Joe had just killed, but victims of whoever was in the siren house. There were no knife or bullet wounds. Most of them had crushed skulls — or rather skulls that had been dented by precise impacts from small round balls.

He bent very carefully, hissing at the pain, and picked one up. A steel ball bearing.

“Nix,” he called, and then held up the ball bearing for her to see. “Riot. Oh my God… Riot!”

Nix shouted the name.

Then they were all shouting her name.

They pounded on the door, laughing and cheering that Riot had — against all logic and odds — managed to escape to this tiny stronghold.

There was a sound from inside. The scrape of a chair being moved, then the metallic click of a lock. Then the door opened slowly, and Riot was there.

Her clothes were torn. She had gashes on her face, her scalp, and across her stomach. Her arms were bloody to the elbow. Tear tracks were cut through the soot and grime on her pretty face. She held a pistol in one hand and a blade in the other.

“Oh my God,” said Nix as she rushed forward to hug Riot. “We were so worried! But I knew you were okay. You and Eve. Where is Eve? We can get you out and…”

Her words rambled on and on, filled with joy and relief. Chong grinned and touched Riot’s shoulder. Lilah nodded, smiling.

Riot stood there and endured the embrace. She did not return it. Or react to it.

Her eyes looked past Nix’s red hair and out into the desert.

“Nix…,” said Benny quietly. He touched her shoulder and pulled her gently back.

“Benny, what are you—?”

Nix saw the look on his face. Her smile flickered. She looked at Riot, perhaps finally realizing that the girl had not reacted or responded in any way.

“Riot?”

Riot’s eyes shifted slowly toward her. The smiles faded slowly from Chong and Lilah’s faces, too.

“Riot…?” asked Nix, uncertainty shading her voice. “Are you okay?”

The former reaper said nothing.

“Riot,” said Benny gently. “Where’s Eve?”

Riot slowly raised her left hand so they could see what she held. It was a small push-dagger. Like a sliver. The kind of thing that was only ever used for one thing. For one terrible purpose.

The blade was painted with red.

She opened her hand and let the blade fall. It struck the ground at her feet and lay there. The cold and silent steel screamed unspeakable things at them.

Or was it Riot screaming? Benny wondered.

Or Nix?

Or all of them?

CHAPTER 90

Benny went inside.

He found the body. Riot had washed the little girl’s face and smoothed out her clothes as best she could. Eve lay on a cot, wrists and ankles tied. There was a bite mark on her arm. It was small, and Benny wondered if it had been another child who’d bitten her.

Riot had gotten her away from the slaughter. At what point had she become aware that Eve was already lost? Before the mad drive out here on a quad? After the door was barred? During the long hours of the night? Had it been quick, or had fate been crueler still and made Riot wait, hour after hour, as the disease consumed the child?

And, oh God, he thought, how can we ever tell her that the cure for the bite was inside the blockhouse all the time? Two pills — or maybe one for a little girl — and the night would not have ended with the worst nightmare any of them could imagine.

How could they ever tell Riot that?

How close to the edge did the former reaper already stand? Was she looking into the abyss, or was the abyss already in possession of her mind? Did her soul float in that vast darkness?

Rage trembled inside Benny’s body. He could feel the exact moment when it ignited, and as he stood there over Eve’s body, that rage spread all through him. His hands curled into fists that were clenched so hard his knuckles hurt. His jaws ground together to hold back — what? A scream? A roar? Whatever it was, if he let it out it would tear his throat raw and bloody. Black poppies seemed to bloom and burst apart in front of his eyes.

It was as if this small death was all the proof of evil that anyone would ever need. Proof that the “holy” mission of Saint John was corrupt to its core — even if that madman believed he had heard the voice of god. No god could ever want this. No god would encourage the kind of harm that had been visited upon this child. The destruction of her town. The slaughter of her parents before her eyes. The disintegration of her sanity. And now the defilement through disease of her body and the ultimate theft of her life. A theft that robbed her of more than the moment, but stole every hour and day and week and year of a life that should have been lived long and to its fullest.

This was the actual cost of war, right here, written with perfect clarity in the blood of the innocent.

He heard a sound in the doorway, and Joe was there. Sweating, worn thin by pain, somehow on his own feet. The ranger shambled over to stand beside Benny. They stood there for a long time looking down at the body, perhaps thinking the same thoughts.

Finally Benny said, “I want to kill them.”

Joe sighed.

“I want to kill them all,” said Benny. “I want to wipe them from the face of the earth.”

“I know,” said Joe Ledger. His voice was heavy with sadness.

Outside they could hear Riot, Nix, Lilah, and Chong.

They were weeping. And sometimes they were screaming.

CHAPTER 91

They turned the sirens on.

Chong came in before they flicked the switch. He did not look at the body on the bed. “Do you know the legend of the banshee?” he asked.

Benny shook his head. “A ghost of some kind?”

“It’s an old Gaelic legend,” said Chong. “The bean sídhe—woman of the fairy mounds. It’s a female spirit who begins to wail when someone is about to die. In Scottish mythology, the bean síth is sometimes seen as a woman washing the bloodstained armor of those who are about to die in battle.”

Joe did not comment as he flicked the switch and the unnatural wail of the sirens rose like the screams of the damned.

They closed the door as they left. Across the airfield the R3’s were already flooding across the bridge from the other side of the trench and running toward the bunker. A million running feet kicked up a dust cloud that blocked out the lingering fires in the hangars and rose to challenge the pillars of smoke for dominance of the morning sky.

Benny wrapped his arm around Riot and kissed her head and walked with her to the helicopter. All this made his back hurt, but he would die rather than complain about that kind of pain. Not now. Not anymore.

They closed the helicopter doors, and when the first of the running zoms reached the turnaround, Joe lifted off and rose high into the air. The Black Hawk hung in the screaming air until the dead were so tightly clustered below that Benny couldn’t see the ground.

Joe spoke to them from the radio speakers.

“Last chance to say no.”

Nix said it for all of them. “We can’t.”

The Black Hawk tilted toward the west, and the helicopter tore through dust and smoke back to the hangars.

“Can you blow up the bridge?” asked Chong.

“No. If there are any survivors hiding, that’s the only way they’ll ever make it to the blockhouse.”

“Is there even a chance of that?”

“No matter how bad things are, there’s usually some chance left,” said Joe. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Chong said, “I guess so.”

But he saw Riot, who huddled inside a ring of Nix and Lilah’s overlapping arms. He knew that Joe was not always right about that.

“Setting down,” said Joe. “Some R3’s are already coming back this way. You’ve got about three minutes. Don’t stop for coffee.”

The Black Hawk touched down between the burning dormitory hangar and the row of parked quads.

This was the second part of Benny’s plan. Since the helicopter didn’t have enough fuel to take them to Mountainside — and the pilot was pushing his own personal limits in flying at all — they had to find another way to get home. The quads were the only real option. Benny had a road map in one pocket, courtesy of Colonel Reid. Mountainside was 470 miles away. In a straight run, they could be there in twelve hours. Having driven the quads for weeks now, he knew that on flat ground they averaged about forty-five miles to the gallon, and that the tanks held 4.75 gallons of fuel. That meant that they could get a little less than halfway home on a full tank. However, there were equipment racks on the bikes capable of holding a couple of gas cans. Neither Joe nor Reid had been able to decide whether they could carry enough gas to get them all the way. It was a gamble.

If the quads ran out of fuel, then they would have to go on foot or find a traveler with a horse to carry the message the rest of the way to the Nine Towns.

Provided there were any towns left.

Saint John and the reaper army had left a month ago.

A month.

On a forced march, they could already have been there.

They had to march under hot Nevada suns and then climb the long mountain roads in California. If they stuck to the main roads, the path was serpentine, closer to five hundred miles. If they had to forage for food, that would slow the pace. But even so, they could conceivably be at the fence line. That was a stretch, though, and Benny doubted they were already there.

However, Haven was many miles closer. Would Saint John want to take the towns in order?

There was no way to know until they got there.

After a month here at Sanctuary, they were now in a desperate race.

As soon as the Black Hawk settled, Benny and Chong pulled back the door. Roasted air blew in at them, carrying with it the burned-meat stink of so many deaths. Benny gagged and covered his mouth with his palm.

Nix and Lilah jumped down first, and they helped Benny and Chong down. Riot lingered for a moment in the doorway. She hadn’t yet spoken a word.

“You can stay here,” said Nix.

Riot leaned out and looked around, then turned and stared back the way they’d come. The bunker was invisible behind the mass of running zoms, but the siren towers marked the spot, the metal voices wailing with a grief no human voice could articulate.

“No,” said Riot. “I can’t.”

It was all she said.

Nix helped her down.

“Tick-tock,” yelled Joe.

They worked fast. Benny checked the fuel tanks and found five that were topped off. They grabbed a bunch of plastic two-and-a-half-gallon cans and began filling them from a hundred-gallon tank set on trestles. With the fuel truck destroyed, it was the last source of the precious ethanol. The process seemed to take forever. When Benny looked at the zoms, he felt his heart sink. The leading edge was less than a half mile away. They were running at full speed, drawn by the noise of the helicopter and the sight of fresh meat.

Lilah fired up one quad and was yelling at Chong as she explained how it worked. Benny thought it was probably the worst example of a “crash course” that he could imagine. Luckily, Chong was the smartest person Benny knew; his ability to acquire and process information was superb. His reflexes and mechanical skills were less impressive, and he drove the quad straight into a wall.

As he trudged toward another one, Lilah trailed behind, explaining in a very loud voice how useless he was. But on his second try Chong proved her wrong by driving a wide circle around the Black Hawk.

When he passed in front of the bridge, he slowed for a moment as he saw how close the dead were.

“Joe!” Benny yelled.

The Black Hawk shuddered and rose a few feet off the ground and drifted toward the bridge. Benny knew that Joe didn’t want to blow the bridge, but time was carving away the question of choice.

Nix and Riot began strapping the filled gas cans onto the backs of the quads. Chong and Lilah pitched in to help.

“Hurry!” yelled Joe, his voice booming from external speakers mounted high on the chopper’s hull.

“That’s it,” shouted Chong. “Let’s go.”

They hauled the last gas cans over and strapped them on. Each quad could carry two cans, a total of five extra gallons. A bit more than a full refill for each bike. Would it be enough?

“Get moving!” bellowed Joe.

They secured their weapons and climbed onto the quads. Five engines growled to life.

“Go, go, go!”

They roared away as, behind them, Joe opened up with the chain guns.

Benny had the route committed to memory. He zoomed ahead and took the lead. The others followed. When he looked back, he saw that the Black Hawk had settled back onto the ground. The dead were pouring over the bridge. They swarmed like cockroaches over the chopper, climbing over each other to get to it. The big propellers turned and as the pile rose and rose, the blades chopped at heads and arms. The guns kept up a continuous fire for almost a minute, and then they fell silent.

Benny slowed and stopped. The vibration of the engine and the posture he needed to maintain in order to ride were setting fires in the knife wound in his back.

Why had Joe landed? Why was he still there?

There were so many zoms around the chopper now that all they could see were the dead.

“No,” Benny said.

The others stopped in a line and they all looked back.

There was no more gunfire.

But many of the zoms were running down the access road toward where the five quads idled.

“Benny,” said Nix softly, “we have to go.”

He hung his head for a moment, sick at heart. But when he caught Riot staring at him and saw the look in her eyes, the rage flared up in his chest again. He bared his teeth and ate his pain as he gunned the engine.

Under the noonday sun, the five quads rocketed along the road toward the gates of Sanctuary.

CHAPTER 92

They left sanctuary behind and found the highway marked on Reid’s map. They headed north on Route 375, and hours later turned west on US 6—the old Grand Army of the Republic Highway.

They met no reapers on the road.

They wanted to. It would have been satisfying in the worst possible way.

The road was open and empty.

Miles melted away behind them, but the road was so long and straight and the scenery so repetitive that it felt like they were standing in place. Only the movement of the fuel gauge seemed to add perspective to their flight. The endless whine of the motors became a mind-numbing monotony, but beneath it was the rage and the fear. Nobody wanted to quit.

They drove in a ghastly silence, each of them in a different kind of pain.

Except for Lilah. She rode beside Chong, and most of the times Benny looked back at them, she was smiling.

Strange girl, he thought, and he wondered if this meant that she would regain all the developmental ground she’d lost since Chong got sick. Would the joy of having her “town boy” be enough to carry her through the coming years of dealing with the limitations of his illness and the risk of contagion?

For now, though, she was happy. It was the only bright spot in their day.

Riot? She was gone. She rode the bike with competence, and during rest times she did her share of the chores without protest or comment. But she was gone. Benny reckoned that most of her was still inside a stone bunker with a small figure who lay on a makeshift bed. Maybe part of her would always remain in that dreadful place.

The day burned down. They lost time going offroad to avoid clogged highways, washed-out bridges, roving packs of zoms, and collapsed buildings. Each lost minute hurt Benny; each wasted hour was like a knife in his heart. They pushed on until Benny’s fuel indicator was nearly buried near the outskirts of Benton, California. According to the map they had to cut through the town, and they didn’t want to do that at night. Not as tired as they were. So they took shelter in a house trailer that had been part of a construction site before First Night.

While Lilah changed the dressing on Benny’s back, Nix filled Riot and Chong in on the flight to find McReady and the battle under Sanctuary. Benny began cringing when Nix got to the part about Archangel, but Riot said nothing.

Chong said, “Guys, we’re busting our butts to get home to warn everyone, but let’s face it, this is really bad.”

“I’ve been thinking about that all day,” said Benny.

“Me too,” said Nix, and even Lilah nodded.

“Well, call me crazy,” said Chong, “but don’t you think we should be talking about this out loud? I mean… let’s come up with an actual plan.”

They took turns outlining the problem as they each viewed it and then throwing out ideas about how the towns could respond. After a while it became clear that Nix had the best suggestions for tactics of warfare — traps, ruses, physical defenses, weapons. But Benny surprised them all with his grasp of strategic thinking. He saw things from a distance. After Nix — and to a great degree, Lilah — presented a long and gruesome list of battle tactics that could be implemented very quickly, Benny told them how he thought they could win the actual war.

Chong, the logician of the group, played devil’s advocate to poke holes in each suggestion. But for once he was unable to tear apart Benny’s plan.

“Wow,” said Chong when they were done, “I’m very nearly impressed with you.”

“Bite me,” said Benny.

“Which reminds me,” said Chong. “Time for my pills.”

Benny went outside to take first watch, and Nix stayed up with him for a bit. They sat close, but they didn’t touch.

After a while she said, “Do you hate me now?”

He took his time and thought about what to say before he opened his mouth. “What I am is hurt and angry. Not angry at you, but angry at us. We held hands, closed our eyes, and stepped off a cliff.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “I can’t be angry with you for telling the truth.”

Nix got up and shivered in the chill of the desert night.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” said Benny, looking up at her.

“What?”

“I do love you. I have for a long time, and I think I always will. When this is over — if we’re both still alive and if the world hasn’t burned down — I’m going to come looking for you. If the situation and the moment are right, I’m going to ask you out on a date.”

“A date?”

“We never had one. We went from being friends to being a couple. The closest thing we had to a first date was getting chased by Charlie Pink-eye, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.”

He saw her smile etched in starlight.

“So… I’ll ask and we’ll see what happens.”

Nix turned and went into the trailer.

Benny sat on a rock and watched the stars wheel in their slow, endless dance above the battered little blue world.

CHAPTER 93

They were refueled and on the road before first light.

Benton was a terrible place. At the intersection where they turned from Route 6 to California State Route 120, they saw the rusted remains of a major crash involving two school buses and several cars. There were zoms everywhere, and it was likely they had been standing there for fifteen years until they heard the sound of the quads. The whole mass of them — adults and children — began shuffling toward the machines. Benny veered off the main street and cut behind houses and through yards to avoid the zoms. It cost time and fuel, but they managed to escape without a fight.

Benny realized that the one main flaw in his plan was the noise the quads made. Zoms would hear them miles away and be drawn to the sound, so they’d be in the path of the five machines.

But what choice did Benny and his friends have? California was far more densely populated than Nevada, and the deeper they went into greener areas, the more likely there would be zoms. Even so, the whole landscape seemed more brown than green. It had been an early and unusually hot spring, and it was clear that there hadn’t been much rainfall. Everything looked brittle and dry. There was none of the lushness of spring, and that depressed Benny. It made him wonder if the whole world was getting ready to die. Or to burn. The fires of hatred ignited by the reapers seemed inescapable.

Then they saw the first billboard advertising Yosemite National Park.

They pulled to a stop in front of it. The faded picture showed a verdant forest and tall, snowcapped mountains. After the starkness of the desert, it looked like it belonged on a different planet, but even then the park in the picture looked withered.

“Mountainside is on the other side of the park,” Benny said to Riot as they poured the last of their fuel into the tanks. “If we follow the map, we’ll pass Haven first, and then we can cut north to our town.”

Riot nodded but said nothing. She replaced the cap, and got back onto the saddle.

Seconds later they were far down the road.

They drove on.

Eighty-four miles later they paused at another billboard.

Benny looked at his friends. Lilah, Nix, and Chong all nodded, knowing without being asked what he wanted to do. Benny turned and drove up a side road until he came to the ruins of the hotel. It was nothing but a field of charred debris. The only structure that still stood was a small utility building. Benny turned off his engine and sat looking at it. The others pulled up beside him and killed their engines too.

On the outside of the building, on the wall facing the road, were words Benny had painted a million years ago.

Benny got off his quad and walked over to the building, his mouth open with wonder. When he’d painted those words after Tom’s death, he’d added his own name, as had Nix, Lilah, Chong, and all the surviving bounty hunters. Solomon Jones, Sally Two-Knives, Fluffy McTeague, J-Dog, and Dr. Skillz. Two dozen names in all.

But now there were other names.

Hundreds of them.

Not copied names, but actual signatures. Each was unique.

Names of people he didn’t know. Names of people he did. People who Benny would never have believed would ever step outside the fence line. Captain Strunk. Mayor Kirsch. Leroy Williams. Many others.

And one name, written small, down in a corner, struck Benny over the heart.

Nix saw the name too, and the sound she made was half laugh and half sob.

“Morgie,” said Chong. “Damn.”

All around the building there were bunches of flowers, handmade corn dolls of a black-haired man with a toy sword, notes pinned to the ground by sharp sticks. A post had been hammered into the ground, and it had a portrait of Tom fixed to it. Benny did not know the artist, but the likeness was excellent. Tom, a faint smile on his face, a look of distant sadness in his eyes. A red sash was draped over the post. Benny raised the cloth to read what was stitched on it: FREEDOM RIDERS.

He had no idea what that was.

Benny felt tears in his eyes, but he was smiling.

He pressed his palm flat against the wall for a full minute. The others did too. Even Riot.

Then they got back on their quads.

They did not stop again until they reached the hill that looked down on Haven, the southernmost of the Nine Towns. They killed their engines, dismounted, and stood there, hidden by the trees.

Below them was a sea of movement and color.

Thousands upon thousands of reapers and R3 zoms flooded through the streets of Haven, while all around them the town of Haven burned.

CHAPTER 94

Chong exhaled a long, tired breath of defeat and sat down on the bare ground.

“I can’t deal with this,” he said. “That’s what they’re going to do to Mountainside. That’s what they’re going to do to my family.”

He put his face in his hands. Lilah squatted down beside him and laid her cheek on his head. It was clear she had no idea what to say, and the frustration of that was evident in every taut line of her body.

Riot closed her eyes and did not move. Orange shadows flickered across her face.

Only Benny and Nix stood watching the massacre.

“Maybe if we’d gotten here sooner,” said Nix softly. She tugged her journal from her pack. “I have so much information in here. There are things we could have done.”

“Against forty thousand reapers?” asked Riot without opening her eyes.

“No army is invincible,” said Nix. Then she thought about it and phrased it differently. “Any army can be defeated.”

Benny nodded. “Absolutely.”

“How?” asked Chong. “The reapers have too many people. They can call as many fast zoms as they want.”

“C’mon, man,” said Benny, “we had a high-tech army, navy, marine corps, air force, National Guard, and police, and we still lost to the zombies.”

“That’s because they didn’t understand what they were fighting until it was too late.”

“Kind of my point,” said Benny. “If we could be defeated, then so can they.”

Chong just shook his head.

“Maybe we could do a raid,” said Nix. “With all those zoms there, they have to keep putting on the chemical — the stuff that’s like our cadaverine. If we — I don’t know, sabotage it. They couldn’t make more of it way out here, could they?”

“Spilling won’t do no good,” said Riot. “They’d roll around on the ground and get it all over ’em. You’d have to burn it.”

“Will it burn?” asked Benny.

“Sure. Burns like all get-out. Saint John lost a mess of reapers that way. Some of ’em get too cocky with torches. Maybe they think fire only burns the heretics.” She shook her head. “I saw some of ’em burn last night. You can’t tell a reaper’s scream from a heretic’s, not when they’re burning.”

“Look, Riot,” began Benny, “if we’d known what was going to happen, we’d never have left to—”

Riot shook her head. “Don’t,” she said, and left it there.

Then she winced as a scream echoed up from the burning town.

“I’d love to see them all burn,” she said viciously. “If I thought it would stop them, I’d set myself on fire and go running into their camp. Oh yeah… I’d sacrifice myself for that….”

“Don’t even think about it,” snapped Nix.

Benny walked to the edge of the hill. With the quads running at top speed, they could be in Mountainside in three or four hours. He did some crude math in his head and figured that it was a three- or four-day march for the reaper army. That was no time at all. Even with Nix’s book filled with diagrams of earthworks and trenches, even if everyone in town worked together to reinforce the walls, three or four days wasn’t enough. The realities of this math conjured images of the reapers invading the town, setting fire to Lafferty’s General Store and the school and the town hall. If he closed his eyes, he knew he’d see images of R3’s chasing the children from the Sunday school, and climbing in through every door and window of Chong’s house. He had witnessed so much carnage since leaving town that it was far too easy to imagine more.

He thought about Morgie Mitchell standing on his front porch, maybe holding the bokken he’d used during those long afternoons with Tom. Morgie, fighting to protect his mother and sisters. Morgie being pulled down and torn to pieces.

There were a few scattered gunshots beyond the veil of smoke. Someone was still alive, still fighting back.

However, Benny’s mind was churning on the word Riot had just used.

Sacrifice.

Is that what it would come to? Is that what it would take to stop this?

The gunshots were fewer and farther between. The whole world seemed to be on fire.

Lilah spoke in the silence. “The trees are burning.”

It was true. The drought and the heat from the reapers’ fires had leeched the last of the moisture from the trees, and the intense heat caused them to burst into flame all around the town. Flaming figures ran among the trees. Zoms, Benny thought, set ablaze but unable to yield to pain until the fires melted their muscles and tendons.

It was horrible.

So horrible.

And yet…

It ignited a dreadful idea in Benny’s brain.

CHAPTER 95

They got back on their quads and drove away.

Twice they had to veer off the roads to avoid running into zoms. They passed through a few small ghost towns that had been cleared of zoms. They rode beside rusted steel tracks on which sat a cargo train that had to be more than a mile long. All the coal hoppers had long since been picked clean by teams of scavengers, as had some of the big chemical tankers. As they passed, Benny saw that each had been marked to indicate content and remaining quantities. There were nine bleach tankers, each one holding thirty thousand gallons. Farther along the road they passed a propane and kerosene company. Benny knew that much of the cooking oil and fuel used in town was brought in from somewhere close. This must be it. There were rows of massive tanks — rusted but still intact. He reckoned there was enough here to supply the eight thousand residents of Mountainside for the next fifty years.

They drove on.

But within a thousand yards Benny slowed, looked over his shoulder, and cut around in a looping U-turn. He saw everyone’s puzzled faces as he headed back to the fuel company yard.

The gate was closed but not locked. There was nothing here to attract zoms and more than enough fuel for any of the traders to come and take some. The cost wasn’t in finding it but getting it safely back to town. The others pulled up beside him.

Chong looked at the DANGER: FLAMMABLE sign. “While I admire your thinking, dude, I don’t think we’re going to able to talk the reapers into gathering here for a big psycho-killer cookout.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” said Benny. He told them the idea that had begun forming on the hill above Haven and was taking shape minute by minute.

They stared at him with a mixture of expressions.

“You’re freaking nuts,” said Chong, appalled.

“It’ll never work,” insisted Lilah.

“In your dreams,” said Riot.

Only Nix remained silent, her eyes narrow and cunning.

“The other day,” said Benny, “when I was talking to Joe Ledger, he asked me how far I’d be willing to go to stop Saint John if he was coming after me and mine. He said that if I could look inside my own head and see the line that I won’t cross or a limit that’s too far, then Saint John will win.”

He turned to them.

“So, I guess I’m asking you guys the same thing. How far are we willing to go to stop Saint John?”

Nix pulled her journal from her pack and held it out to Benny. “As far as it takes,” she said.

CHAPTER 96

They were five miles from Mountainside when they saw two men on horses standing in the middle of the road. Benny slowed his quad and stopped twenty feet from them. Both men wore jeans and carpet coats, and both had red sashes across their chests. The man on the left was the smaller of the two. He had dark skin and a shaved head and machetes slung from each hip. The man on the right was thick in the chest and shoulders, and the handle of a wooden bokken rose above his left shoulder, held in place by a cloth sling. The horses shied at the sound of the engine, so Benny cut the motor off. So did the others.

Everyone — the two men and the five of them — dismounted, and for a few fractured moments they stood in the road and stared at one another.

“Oh my God,” Benny heard Nix say.

He walked forward until he stood a foot away from the taller of the two. Close enough to shake hands. Close enough to punch.

He said, “Morgie.”

Morgie Mitchell looked at Benny, at the quads, at Chong and Lilah. At Riot.

At Nix.

Benny tensed against what was coming. Rage. Hard words. Fists.

Then Morgie suddenly gave a huge whoop of pure, unfiltered delight and swept Benny off the ground in a fierce bear hug.

“You ugly monkey-banger!” he bellowed. He swung Benny around in a circle, scaring the horses. Nix and Chong came running over. They wrapped their arms around Morgie. Nix kissed him. They spun in a crazy circle, ignoring all the stares and gasps and words.

Morgie tugged his arms free and then rewrapped everyone and pulled them close.

“I’m sorry,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. “Benny… Nix… I’m so sorry. I’m a stupid ape and you have every right to kick my ass.”

“Ughh… sure, okay… love to,” gasped Benny. “But… ouch.”

Morgie realized that the look on Benny’s face had gone from delight to pain, and he let him go. “Did I hurt you? Ah, jeez, I’m a freaking idiot. I—”

“No,” wheezed Benny, backing off and staggering. “I kind of have a knife wound thing going on, and I think I popped my stitches.”

“Knife wound?” echoed Morgie.

Benny’s knees buckled, and the other man darted forward and caught him.

“I never thought I’d see you again, Benjamin Imura,” said Solomon Jones. “I never thought we’d see any of you again.”

He helped Benny over to a fallen log and steadied him as he sat. The others clustered around. Benny could feel wet heat under his clothes.

“How are you here?” asked Morgie, his face almost slack with confusion. “And how do you have cars?”

“Not cars, Morg,” said Chong, clapping him on the back. “Quads.”

Morgie looked past him to the girl with the leather vest and scalp tattoos.

“Whoa,” he said. “Hello. Where’d you come from?”

“It’s a long story,” said Nix.

“Plenty of daylight for a good yarn,” said Solomon. “We have lots of time.”

Benny shook his head. “No,” he said. “We don’t.”

A terse hour later the story was told. The jet and the wrecked airplane. The mutagen and Archangel. Sanctuary and the American Nation. Joe Ledger. Slow zoms and fast. The Night Church and Saint John. Brother Peter. Benny, Nix, and Chong took turns telling different parts of it. Benny tried to read Solomon’s face, but the man was too practiced at keeping his emotions and reactions in check. Morgie was a different story — Benny could read everything on his face. Shock, doubt, horror, pity, and fear.

When they got to the part about Haven, Morgie looked like he’d taken a physical blow.

“My cousins are there,” he said. “They work in the feed and grain store.”

No one felt the need to correct the tense of that word to “worked.” It was an unnecessary cruelty.

Solomon straightened and walked a few paces away, his fists on his hips. “Three days, you say?”

“Maybe four,” said Chong. “It depends on how long they stay at Haven.”

“Forty thousand of them,” murmured Solomon. “Holy mother of God.”

“And all those zoms,” said Morgie. “The fence will never hold.”

“No,” agreed Nix. “But it might not matter.”

Solomon turned sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nix touched Benny’s arm. “Tell him what you have in mind.”

Benny outlined his plan.

“No way, man,” said Morgie. “That’s crazy.”

“I know.”

“It’s impossible. No one would agree to that.”

“They could just do nothing and let the reapers kill them,” said Benny coldly.

Solomon sat down next to him on the log. He sighed.

“This is your plan?” he asked.

“Nix put a lot of twists in it.”

“It’s his plan,” said Nix, and Chong nodded. Even Lilah agreed.

“You’re just a kid, Benny,” said Solomon, but even he didn’t sound convinced. “How did you get from Mountainside to here?” It was a question about distance traveled that had nothing to do with geography or the length of time they’d been on the road. Everyone knew that. “Tom would never have thought of something like this.”

“I’m not Tom,” said Benny, and those were very hard words to say. Nix took his hand and squeezed his fingers.

“No,” said Solomon, “you’re not. And frankly, I don’t know who you are. You’re certainly not the kid who left Gameland a couple of months ago.”

“No,” said Benny. “He died somewhere out in the desert.”

His comment wasn’t meant as a joke, and no one took it that way.

Solomon ran a hand over his shaved head. “You really want to sell this plan to the people in town?”

“If they can think of another way to stop forty thousand reapers,” said Benny, “I’m all ears.”

“Even so…”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“I think this plan is crazy,” said Solomon. “But… I also think it’s brilliant. Brilliant in a way that hurts my heart, Ben. I can’t even guess what it’s doing to you.”

There was nothing to say to that.

Into the awkward silence, Chong nodded to the red sashes and asked, “What are those?”

Morgie brightened. “It’s for the Freedom Riders. We all wear them.”

“The what?”

Solomon answered that. “After Tom died, all of us who were out at Gameland — Sally Two-Knives, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz, Fluffy McTeague, the whole bunch of us — rode to Mountainside. We told everyone what happened. We found enough stuff in the rubble to prove that Gameland existed and that people from the towns were routinely going there to get in on the fights in the zombie pits. Easy to prove anyway, since a lot of town folks died out there and there was no other explanation for their absence from town. Mayor Kirsch called a meeting of the councils of all Nine Towns. I told the story again, and I brought a copy of the proposal that Tom had prepared.”

“What proposal?” asked Chong.

Benny said, “Tom kept submitting ideas for how to improve the town’s defenses and for creating a militia to patrol the Ruin. Like the town watch, but for outside the fence.”

Morgie tapped his sash. “This time they listened.”

“A militia?”

“We don’t like to use that word,” said Solomon. “It sends the wrong message. The Freedom Riders are officially a peacekeeping force. Two hundred strong, and almost as many in training, like young Mr. Mitchell here.”

“I’m a cadet,” said Morgie, and he actually blushed.

“Two hundred,” said Benny.

Chong said, “Saint John has forty thousand.”

Solomon pursed his lips. “Benny… this plan of yours… you know it’s crazy, right? I mean, you have enough perspective left to grasp that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Benny.

“Then I think you kids better wait here. You roll into town on those bikes, telling stories like this, and all you’re going to do is create a fuss or a panic.”

“But—”

“Let me talk to Mayor Kirsch. Ever since Tom died, he’s had a big change of heart. Him and Captain Strunk. I think I can get them to understand what you want to do and why.”

“They won’t like it worth a wet fart,” observed Morgie.

“Well put,” said Chong, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

Solomon smiled, showing a lot of very white teeth. “I guess I’ll have to be persuasive.”

He swung into the saddle. “You kids take the next turn and go that way two miles. There’s a way station there with food and supplies. Wait for me there. But listen up… there have been reports of some wandering zoms in the area. Stay alert.”

“Fast or slow?” asked Nix.

“We only get one kind around here,” said Solomon. “At least so far. Zoms are zoms, though.”

Benny shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Solomon met his gaze and nodded. Then he wheeled his horse around and spurred it into a fast gallop.

When he was gone, Morgie asked, “What, you’re not afraid of zoms anymore?”

“Slow, dumb ones?” mused Chong. “No much. Fast, smart ones? Yup. But you haven’t met the reapers yet, Morg. There are scarier things out there, believe me.”

Nix helped Benny onto his quad.

“Benny,” she asked softly, “maybe I missed it… but when did we stop being kids?”

He turned away. He had no answer that felt sane to say out loud.